Hello guys. I know some of you have different type of accounts here at the same time – exclusive and non-exclusive. Is there any explanation how you decide what tracks to stay here exclusive and what not? Please answer without using “BIG” names of other stocks. Thank you for reply.

My back story….Well initially I stumbled onto another site when looking into this stuff. I was looking at sites for my photography, and had no idea there was RF music. Or should I say I knew it, but thought it wasn’t going for be for me. I wanted to hunt the big paying juicy license market. I joined a site where there was no middle man, and forgot about it after a year or so, focused on my band then last summer had a random sale. The idea was back. Everything I read however said run away from exclusive. You re greatest assets to yourself is to keep total control of your tracks and having them everywhere you d like. I typed in Royalty Free music and found a few sites and was listening to J Hungers music, it was light straightforward warm, I thought to myself, I think I could do this. So I messaged him, (just always ask, when in doubt check it out) and he told me about audio jungle and told me a few top authors to check out how they re promoting themselves ect…I think it was the forums that made me want to join because I figured I would learn alot through osmosis ect. I was envision a life of waking up in the morning..not to an alarm..no job except for making music. So I was in the signup process and AJ was asking exclusive or non. At the fork in the road I said well…I’ll make an exclusive account and see how that goes and I’ll write mostly from scratch for that one. So it was a good start initially. I was adding what I felt were less marketable music on other sites ect…my rock catalogue and was just putting them up to see if they d be any good. Then I started a non exclusive account here and threw up the same tracks. Now oddly enough my non exclusive account is outselling my exclusive one by far. Which is so weird, I was like darn, I would be making more money on exclusive and percentages could grow over time. Its all kind of slowed up in recent weeks, so Ive added a few new pieces to my exclusive one and have started looking more into how to link and promote outside of AJ. I was checking this week how top authors add their links on youtube and soundcloud to get a few ideas how to bring it all back here. So I have two accounts now, one with more acoustic style tracks, and one with in your face rock stuff. Now I’m trying to narrow it down more and see what happens. I think one account would be easier in all honesty. But if you go non exclusive, then Id say really put in the time and work to manage the other places too and post everywhere you can. Which can act as a buffer for slow times here. Which is the whole point of being non exclusive.

Thx, thought it might help with your decision. The thing is eventually I want to refine my approach and submit to tip sheets and to music supervisors so, that’s a benefit to being non exclusive. I see this as good training ground though.

We were looking into the same thing, but thought it would be a huge amount of work to maintain and market many non-exclusive accounts. There are differing opinions on exclusive vs non-exclusive – read this article (bear in mind it’s written by an exclusive library owner, so a pinch of salt is needed with regards to his arguments ):

We’ve got a couple of non-exclusive accounts outside of AJ as they offer the 50% plus royalties, but whether they are any good is something we will find out later (we haven’t been with them long).

The major argument against non-exclusive seems to be the retitling issues for royalty pay outs – the problems you can come up against if you start publishing your work via multiple re-titling royalty libraries are vast because nobody knows where the music came from and therefore which library gets paid (and therefore you).

On top of that, each has their own pricing structure which affects how much you get paid. Imagine one place sold your track for $50 and another $15 – which one would you prefer to claim as having sold your track?

Royalty-free libraries don’t have that issue as there are no cue sheets to fill in when broadcasting, but while being non-exclusive creates more exposure for your tracks, there’s the chance that if you sell the same item cheaper elsewhere, you could have some angry clients asking why they paid more for the same thing elsewhere!

Interesting article, and a lot of good points. I’m not sure I agree with some of the statements from my experience, for instance I have not experienced that marketplaces that offer both exclusive and non-exclusive are less likely to promote the non-exclusive tracks. And the fact that if you’re listed non-exclusive somewhere you can’t go exclusive with the same track somewhere else is something that should be obvious to any author considering non-exclusive status.

Though it seemed like the emphasis was on retitled works, which is not synonymous with being non-exclusive. I don’t re-title anything (that first title is hard enough to come up with!) with the exception of a marketplace that required I rename my “Acoustic Loop – [n]” tracks because they didn’t allow similar titles for different works. But even that I didn’t feel good about – it seems actually downright deceitful, come to think of it

I agree that maintaining several marketplaces is a pain, but it does alleviate the need to advertise on your own to a certain extent because you’re reaching a broader audience by nature.

As for disparate pricing for the same tracks, I also don’t know how to reconcile the sometimes staggering price differences between marketplaces. Some do offer less restrictive licensing, and there may be companies/buyers that will only use a particular marketplace that they have used before and trust. But (and I shouldn’t bring this up, as this is a whole other topic with heated opinions) if I had my way I would sell my tracks everywhere for about what they sell for on AJ – I really like the fact that my tracks are within the budget of millions of amateur videographers up on youtube who would be priced out of the market at $50 / track.

jhunger said
Interesting article, and a lot of good points. I’m not sure I agree with some of the statements from my experience, for instance I have not experienced that marketplaces that offer both exclusive and non-exclusive are less likely to promote the non-exclusive tracks. And the fact that if you’re listed non-exclusive somewhere you can’t go exclusive with the same track somewhere else is something that should be obvious to any author considering non-exclusive status.

Yeah, I agree – what’s more, I’ve heard of exclusive libraries literally bundling their whole catalogue on a hard drive and passing over to production suites who pay a ‘blanket’ licence fee. That essentially means composers don’t get a penny as licence agreements are usually outside of the deal when you sign up, so unless your track is actually registered by the client on a cue sheet (a fight in itself), then royalties are the only income for writers from those deals. With blanket licences, there’s no incentive for libraries to push your tracks as they’re already making money.

Though it seemed like the emphasis was on retitled works, which is not synonymous with being non-exclusive. I don’t re-title anything (that first title is hard enough to come up with!) with the exception of a marketplace that required I rename my “Acoustic Loop – [n]” tracks because they didn’t allow similar titles for different works. But even that I didn’t feel good about – it seems actually downright deceitful, come to think of it

It’s actually the library that retitles your tracks usually – either appending an acronym to the end of tracks, or completely renaming like ‘R2D2473264-nothing-like-your-title’. That’s why it’s so confusing I think…

I agree that maintaining several marketplaces is a pain, but it does alleviate the need to advertise on your own to a certain extent because you’re reaching a broader audience by nature.

I can see that, I also think it gives more power to the writer as a result which I’m always in favour of. We are providing the product / service at the end of the day (!).

As for disparate pricing for the same tracks, I also don’t know how to reconcile the sometimes staggering price differences between marketplaces. Some do offer less restrictive licensing, and there may be companies/buyers that will only use a particular marketplace that they have used before and trust. But (and I shouldn’t bring this up, as this is a whole other topic with heated opinions) if I had my way I would sell my tracks everywhere for about what they sell for on AJ – I really like the fact that my tracks are within the budget of millions of amateur videographers up on youtube who would be priced out of the market at $50 / track.

If you have a steady stream of sales then I can see how one could view it with the same mindset as selling iPhone apps i.e. people think : “it’s only a pound or two, so I’ll buy 10 and still won’t feel the hole in my pocket”. But for new authours (like us, despite the deceiving length of time this account has been open for), getting into the limelight to make those sales is a long and arduous journey so our earnings are still peanuts at this stage (and probably will be for a while!). Having a higher earning threshold with a higher bar for standards would benefit everyone, but again that’s been discussed loads in other threads.

I agree that making these things accessible is important, but I think that’s more true if we were talking about a general consumer product like Trax or iTunes. As well as YouTube video makers, most people coming to this marketplace are likely to be looking for music for corporate videos and other commercial productions where decent money is being earned, they’re looking for a complication-free way to broadcast their media.

I don’t know jhunger, I just feel music is being devalued the same way as photography. And this is also off-topic, but I have a good friend who used to be able to live off his photography sales two years ago. Now, he gets the same sales but earns half as much because the libraries have pushed the price down to keep competitive. Without setting a limit to a decent minimum price across the board, we inevitably reach a point where our music is sold on a subscription basis and we earn something like 25% of what we do now. $14 is super cheap, some people spend that kind of money on lunch here in London!

tacoMusic said
If you have a steady stream of sales then I can see how one could view it with the same mindset as selling iPhone apps i.e. people think : “it’s only a pound or two, so I’ll buy 10 and still won’t feel the hole in my pocket”. But for new authours (like us, despite the deceiving length of time this account has been open for), getting into the limelight to make those sales is a long and arduous journey so our earnings are still peanuts at this stage (and probably will be for a while!). Having a higher earning threshold with a higher bar for standards would benefit everyone, but again that’s been discussed loads in other threads.

I agree that making these things accessible is important, but I think that’s more true if we were talking about a general consumer product like Trax or iTunes. As well as YouTube video makers, most people coming to this marketplace are likely to be looking for music for corporate videos and other commercial productions where decent money is being earned, they’re looking for a complication-free way to broadcast their media.

I don’t know jhunger, I just feel music is being devalued the same way as photography. And this is also off-topic, but I have a good friend who used to be able to live off his photography sales two years ago. Now, he gets the same sales but earns half as much because the libraries have pushed the price down to keep competitive. Without setting a limit to a decent minimum price across the board, we inevitably reach a point where our music is sold on a subscription basis and we earn something like 25% of what we do now. $14 is super cheap, some people spend that kind of money on lunch here in London!

I absolutely see your point, and I think that there is some truth to music being devalued. I think it’s worse for stock photographers than it is for us, given the medium and the complete sea change that digital photography has brought. Though for stock audio I do actually subscribe to the “make it up in volume” mindset, which might ultimately not be the best view on things for a sustainable stock music industry. I’m very interested in this topic (even though it has been discussed at length before), so I moved it over here so as not to go too far off the path of this thread